No more inhibitions

Out-of-town parents. A cool 21-year-old to supply the beer. Dark corners or bedrooms to coax the girls into impromptu make-out sessions. It was the typical teenage party decades ago.

Today the list isn't all that different. But if you're lucky enough to be invited (which you won't be if you're old enough to remember the 1980s) you might get a glimpse into a newly emerging teenage dynamic. A role reversal of sorts where more girls are taking over as the aggressors. Where young girls feel free to experiment sexually without fear of society's expectations.

Coed sleep overs, which most parents never would have condoned a generation ago, are acceptable social events. Oral sex is a convenient alternative to inter- course.

"Girls make out with girls," said Kalli Kearney, a 13-year-old from Darnell-Cookman Middle School. "They have boyfriends, but they make out with girls."

Every generation of teenagers has its way of out-shocking and out-sexing the previous group of young people, and in that sense teens who own the middle- and high-school hallways today are no different. But for the most marked changes in this generation, turn your eye toward the girls.

Their language, their fashion sense and attitudes cue from television shows such as Nip/Tuck, Laguna Beach and Sex and the City. Heterosexual girls make out with other girls at parties and grind dance on each other at Club Paris' Teen Night. They talk openly about their sexual status on public online forums such as MySpace.

It's not all talk either, if you believe the sociologists, sex experts, pastors, educators, parents and local teens we interviewed.

In the past few years teenage girls, who lagged behind their male counterparts by 15 percent with regard to sexual experience, have closed the gender gap, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. And experts who study teenage sexuality are struggling to explain why.

Some say society's expectations of girls have changed, prompting them to adjust their behaviors. Others think past numbers were misleading and that girls are only now more comfortable admitting to pollsters what they've been doing all along.

It's safe to say that not every girl in the Father Knows Best era kept it on in the back seat of the 1954 Buick Skylark. Nor are we saying that every teenage girl is taking it off today. But national data is debunking the conventional wisdom that girls are sitting idly by, hoping silently that the cute boy in biology class will ask them to cruise the strip Saturday night.

Gracie Cain, a 14-year-old student at Douglas Anderson School for the Arts, said more than half of her friends aren't virgins. Her parents have raised her in the traditional Catholic faith, but she said, "I'm still kind of judging whether I want to have sex before I get married."

In 1991, 57 percent of teenage males had sexual intercourse at least once, compared to only 50 percent of females, according to the Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

A teenage girl dances at the edge of an upstairs balcony at Club Paris during last Sunday's Teen Night, which is meant for teens from 13 to 17.

Since then the number of teens having sex has decreased across the board. However, the number of girls having sex decreased at a slower rate than the boys, allowing them to pull even.

In 2005, about 46 percent of females and 48 percent of males reported engaging in sexual behavior, according to the same survey. With the margin of error the numbers are statistically the same.

"There is no longer a gender gap," said Jennifer Manlove, Child Trends area director of fertility and family. "What's driving the trend is white females. White females are slightly more likely to have sex than white males."

National experts said that girls also express themselves more sexually and talk more openly about the topic with their friends, boyfriends and (gasp) adults.

THE NUMBERS

Teen girls and sex

Trends among never-married teens ages 15-19 who ever had sexual intercourse. While both sexes slowed down, the girls pulled even with the boys.

MALES

Year

FEMALES

60 percent

1988

51 percent

55 percent

1995

49 percent

46 percent

2002

46 percent

Source: 2002 National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics.

THE NUMBERS

Teens and sex

Cumulative percentage of never-married teens who ever had sexual intercourse, by age and gender, 2002.

BOYS

Age

GIRLS

6%

Before 14

8%

13%

Before 15

15%

25%

Before 16

27%

39%

Before 17

43%

54%

Before 18

58%

65%

Before 19

70%

Source: 2002 National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics. This is currently the most up-to-date scientific survey.

Area parents and educators agree.

They see it in the clothes teenage girls wear and the conversations they overhear in the car, discussions that sometimes baffle even the most battle-tested adult.

Davis was perfectly comfortable using the edgy street language in mixed company where previous generations would've been more reluctant to respond or would've chosen more genteel terms.

The response never would've happened at the after-school program 20 or even 10 years ago when more girls kept their mouths shut and their legs closed, said Pam Williams, who runs the program at the Pine Forest community center.

"They're not passive like they used to be. They are more sexually-oriented and aggressive," Williams said.

Ricky Lindsey is the youth pastor at First Baptist Church in Palatka and only 10 years removed from Palatka High School. He's concerned about shifts in attitudes of today's teenage girl from the girls he remembers in high school.

"A lot of the girls are starting to take on the mentality of guys where it's like, 'Oh you're not having sex?' vs. 'Oh, you're having sex?' "

And it's not just one particular group that's talking about it or experimenting with it.

"Now it's not the 'bad group.' It's more or less everybody," Lindsey said.

Some teens see oral sex as an alternative for intercourse, and it's not just for the boys anymore. Girls are just as likely to give or receive it as boys. It's about 55 percent for both, according to CDC National Survey of Family Growth.

CDC researchers said the numbers for the boys are about the same as they were a decade ago. But the researchers aren't able to say whether more girls are having oral sex today than they used to because no one thought to ask them years ago about their sexuality. To do so would be taboo.

Dance partners kiss during last Sunday's Teen Night at Club Paris. Kissing is against club rules on Teen Night.

But a Johns Hopkins University professor, cited by Slate.com, was able to show a significant increase in teenagers engaging in oral sex since 1990. For boys, it was up from about half to 75 percent to 80 percent. For girls, it was up from about 25 percent to 75 percent to 80 percent.

And don't think girls aren't getting any pleasure out of it.

"My female patients tell me that having oral sex with a guy gives them power over the guy that they didn't have before because they are the active one in the act as compared to intercourse where they are frequently the passive ones," said Joel Schwarts, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Abington Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania.

Of the two dozen or so teens we talked to in Jacksonville, most believed that oral sex is "technically" sex, but all agreed that it is a perfectly socially acceptable act and in some cases preferred because there is no risk of pregnancy.

"It's a way around it," said 14-year-old Steven Webb, a freshman at Stanton.

Nationally, about 43 percent of teens believe oral sex isn't as big a deal as sexual intercourse, according to a poll conducted by NBC News and People Magazine.

"Thanks to President Clinton and others what the previous generation considered as sex this generation does not," Schwarts said. "This allows them to have oral sex freely because to them it is not sex."

So why are we seeing this dramatic shift in the girls' behaviors?

It depends on which expert you ask. But there are several theories common among most of them, including society's acceptance of public female sexuality - especially for teen girls - and misinterpretation of the data.

The two are sort of cause and effect, according to Kris Gowen, research associate in the area of adolescent health at Portland State University.

"Whether or not the girls are having more sex or not, they're more comfortable saying that they're having sex, and it's sort of OK for girls to say 'Yes, I'm a sexual being or I'm sexually active,' " Gowen said.

And girls may feel more comfortable admitting their sexuality because most of society has removed the taboo.

It's OK for a student at Douglas Anderson to wear a T-shirt that reads, "Tell your boyfriend to stop calling me." "I know what boys want," or "Yes, but not with u!."

However, Michelle Durant, a 17-year-old student at Paxon School for Advanced Studies, said dressing provocatively isn't for the boys' benefits but for the girls'.

"I know some girls who are wholesome and dress very conservatively. But then there are other girls who are 'good girls' and are really smart, but they just want to show off what they have," she said.

Kalli Kearney admits that message may be lost on the guys.

"They think you dress that way for them," Kearney said.

Girls can check out books in the Jacksonville Public Library's teen sections that offer advice on "What to wear when you might be fooling around." (A shirt that buttons up the front and a front-close bra, for obvious reasons.)

And it's OK for girls to admit to other girls that they've had oral sex or intercourse, without fear of being shunned in the cafeteria. Many girls no longer ostracize other girls just because they're experienced. Even girls who have made the choice to wait until marriage don't care if other girls don't.

"I'm not going to stop being someone's friend if they've had sex. I just think that's insane," said 15-year-old Kate Pratt-Dannals, a sophomore at Paxon. "There are very few girls who shun females [who have sex]."

Until the early 1970s, it was legal for most high schools and colleges to expel a pregnant, unmarried girl. Joyce Warren, who graduated from the Duval County school system in 1965, said there was no alternative program here for pregnant teens.

"They just disappeared. You would hear somebody was pregnant, but you would never see them."

Duval started an alternative program in the '70s that eventually produced the Beulah Beal Young Parents Center, a school teens can attend until they deliver. The CDC said teen pregnancy rates dropped 42 percent from 1991 to 2003. But Warren, who went on to become the school system's lead facilitator for the Teen Parent Program, said those girls who do get pregnant are just staying at their schools. Teens say friends throw them baby showers.

Durant said she knows a lot of people her age are having sex so it's "not that big of a deal" there are four pregnant girls at her school.

Although attitudes among teens may have changed, what the girls really want hasn't, according to Deborah Tolman, director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality.

"When I listen to girls talking . . . what I still hear is that girls want relationships, but they've taken that wish underground," Tolman said. "The options available to girls have become 'hooking up' and 'friends with benefits.' "

So in their quest to obtain relationships girls may be having sex more often to get what they want, she said.

Her theory rings true when Carrie Geartz, a 16-year-old Mandarin High School student, talks about why anyone would want to have a boyfriend.

"You feel like you're loved," she said.

Another theory is teens today are the daughters and granddaughters of the women who started the sexual revolution in the 1960s.

"Part of that was about women feeling freer to experience sexuality. Women are much more open about their sexuality and about the pleasure of sexuality," said Jane Brown, professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who studies the media's influence over teens' sexuality.

Parents today may be more accepting or understanding of cultural changes than their parents.

Durant said her mom allows her to attend coed sleepovers, something her mom was never allowed to do.

Gracie Cain's mom, Corina, 45, never dared talk about anything sexual growing up, not even in whispers to her closest girlfriends. But last year she watched as her 14-year-old daughter participated in discussions about oral sex, intercourse, pregnancy and other implications on a public access television program.

The program seems tame, though, compared to the episodes of Nip/Tuck and the explicit music videos she allows Gracie to watch.